WOODEN
SHJIPS
Audio,
Brighton, 9th Dec
Themselves
San Francisco-based, Wooden Shjips are presumably named after the classic Jefferson Airplane track. (Though how they came by that
strange extra letter I've njo idjea.) And naming a band after a track
already used by another band most commonly signifies music that's
merely going to regurgitate. But, shortly after seeing the Black Angels, it seems I'm going to have
to make another exception to my rule.
For
they're not much like the Airplane at all, subjecting songs to their
psychedelic curdling. Their sound's more metronomic, open and
expansive. 'Space rock' is a term often used interchangeably with
psychedelic but in this case would be more fitting. Their website describes their mission statement as “transforming heady
psychedelic rock into minimalist masterpieces”, and as the organ
swirls they sound like something closer to the Velvet's 'What
Goes On'. Except with Hawkwind's guitar sound. And
something of Question Mark and the Mysterious thrown in too.
They
came with the perfect backdrop film, a Pollock come to life meets
Bridget Riley combined with the old TV closedown signal. A shorthand
way of saying this isn't going to be that pretty
kind of psychedelia, with all those coloured lights and childhood
whimsey.
They
have such a good rhythm section - tight, driving and spacious
simultaneously – that you start to wonder if they didn't spent
years honing their skills marshalled into someone's backing band, and
tonight is their first chance to break free. The vocals would even by
the most charitable source be described as weak, but then they
clearly aren't intended to be dominant. (They barely speak to the
audience between tracks, as if words don't interest them.) It's the
organ that takes to the fore, its surges at times almost breaking
into drones. At times the player (who in police parlance I now know
to be called Nash Whalan) would only marginally move his hands, like
some expert driver, like Irwin Schmidt in those classic old Can
clips.
I
suspect, however, that everything that makes the band so great live
would start to work against them on CD. Truth to tell, they don't
have a great range, they're one of those bands who have their sound
and would rather stick to it. And what makes for the hypnotic force
of repetition would, once recorded, most likely soon become mere
repetition.
But
definitely a band to take in live, should they sajl your way.
From
Paris...
...and
a live session on American radio...
CALIFONE
The
Hope, Brighton, Sun 17th Nov
You
could describe Califone as having parked their easy chair at the
point where the venn diagrams of blues, folk and country converge.
The slow and steady pace of their songs makes them feel like boxcars
traversing the landscape, allowing listeners to hitch a ride. Though
Tim Rutili is the singer and chief songwriter you could hardly call
so unassuming a fellow a frontman. Looking like Columbo's more
crumpled slacker brother, he keeps mischievously suggesting he should
introduce each number in a declammatory Gene Simmonds style. Then
almost murmurs the words to their track 'Funeral
Singers', “The book is aching for the tree/ Return,
return, return to me...”
...and
they must be the only band matching that description to have written
a fiddle-led ode to Surrealist film-maker Luis Bunel. For there's
also a persistently left-field edge to what they do, it just takes
you a while to notice its there. It's like they've stepped straight
from the back porch to the sound lab, skipping all the intervening
stages. (They are, after all, not from some rustic backwater but
Chicago, virtual home of experimental rock.)
Let's compare them momentarily to Tunng, who twist folk tunes
until you're haunted by their strangeness. But Tunng's music is almost the definition of uncanny - strangely familiar. While Califone, strangely,
are merely familiar. Every sound they turn their hand to comes out
sounding entirely natural. In the old days, people picked up guitars
and fiddles when they wanted to make music. These days there are more
things to pick up. But with Califone it still feels the same deal.
After
I first heard them on the late, lamented radio show 'Mixing
It', one of the presenters commented their music sounded
like it had simply been lying there waiting to be played - perfectly
summing up their apparent artlessness. Or, to quote from another
song, the afore-mentioned 'Luis Bunel', “Every
camera loves you better/When you quit trying to play”. “Quit
trying to play” could indeed be their axiom, a Yoda-like refusal to
strain for effort.
As the
set progresses, the unaffected-effects songs slowly stretch into
something more wig-out, one number pulsing like something from Steve
Reich. But it's less that they expand their musical ground, more that
they pull more things into their orbit.
As if
gone native to their unassuming style, they seemed to imagine no-one
would want an encore and instead traipsed off to their merch stall.
Having one then insisted on them, they found themselves unprepared
and had to rely on suggestions called out by the crowd. It couldn't
have ended in a more appropriate way.
The
afore-mentioned 'Funeral Singers'...
...and
some honest-to-God genuine shaky footage from Brighton...
MOUNT
KIMBIE
Concorde
2, Brighton, Wed 6th Nov
Here
at Lucid Frenzy HQ, we have an attitude to the Young People's Music
of Today akin to Saxon Kings' feelings about baths. We like to dip
our toe in it every few months, whether we need to or not.
Of
course there's more to it than faddishness and generation gaps.
There's not much point making more music if you're
not going to move music on. Which inevitably
leaves some old timers behind. But there has of late been a more
fundamental shift. Those Young People of Today, they listen to music
through iPlayers or on-line. (They do, I've seen them.) And the
different delivery system makes the music different. You can't simply
separate form and content.
Us Old
'Uns tend to focus on the downside of this. Music has been made a
commodity, to be consumed like the rest of us use water or
electricity. But there's an inevitable upside that goes with it.
Music always was a commodity fetish, perhaps the most classic example
of the term, and sometimes what's really changed
is a decline in the fetishism rather than a rise in the
commodification. Music was once encumbered with cultural baggage and
pressed into signifying your identity. People would often stick
rigidly to certain genres, never straying. But if music's simply what
comes up next on your shuffle player, your relationship to it becomes
more utilitarian. It either works for you or it doesn't.
...which
means, I contend, that live becomes a good way to take in modern
music. A gig is a shuffle player made out of real people. By the time
you've got to the venue, it's too late to take the LP off the
turntable. You might as well try going with it, seeing if it takes
you somewhere. (In an irony, in our internet age bands now make their
living from playing live more than releasing music. Of course people
try to capture them on fuzzy footage for YouTube. But everyone knows
the experience isn't the same.)
...and
as it happens Mount Kimbie are an excellent live band. Dispelling the
notion that dance music doesn't work in a gig format, they mix live
and electronic instruments with alacrity. They even spent a fair
amount on time playing actual honest-guv guitars. (I expect some of
those Young People of Today had to Google what the funny stringed
objects were.)
One of
the axioms of Lucid Frenzy is that great art can straddle apparent
contradictions. And, as was alluded to over Fuck Buttons, Mount Kimbie can marshall
the power of repetitive beats without becoming their slave, without
succumbing to simple rigid repetition. There is always a twist or
turn in the track. There's never the sense that the clever stuff is
merely smeared on the basic beats, like the frozen veg on the dull
dough of a bargain basement pizza. Mount Kimbie live
in the beats. Perhaps notably, they're signed to maverick electronica
label Warp, known for releasing (among others) Aphex Twin, Autechre
and Squarepusher.
According to that great authority Wikipedia, they're “arguably responsible for the term post-dubstep”. While I find I take to dubstep on the
rare occasions its path crosses mine, I confess I don't have much of
a clue what it is. So post-dubstep lies several
levels beyond my comprehension. (Less dancefloor-fixated is about all
I've gathered.)
So
here's an observation that is almost certainly borne of ignorance -
Mount Kimbie's post-dubstep is actually putting the dub influence
back in. (An influence which never seemed that pronounced to me to
being with.) On rare occasions this takes the form of literal lifts,
the most obvious being echo effects. But in a wider sense it borrows
dub's sense of sonic depth. Dub didn't try to draw a picture, in
which a singer stood in front of a backing band. Dub was to music
what a Pollock abstract is to painting, it doesn't approximate
perspective but still conveys pictoral depth – seeming to stretch
deeper and deeper the longer you look into it. Notably, the image for
their tour and most recent release is a graphic of abstract,
overlapping shapes. With Mount Kimbie, sounds sit on top of one
another, overlap, recede. The way they interact is what makes the
magic happen.
Mount
Kimbie are really very good indeed, and to try out some of their
music might be a very good use of your time. Or, in the parlance of
the day, they is bleedin' blindin'. Well wicked, mate. 'avin' it, an'
that. (Note to self: check this is the way Those Young People
actually talk before posting.)
Not
from Brighton, but same tour...
Coming soon! More belated gig reviews which compare music to Pollock abstracts...
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